Thanks for this Jessie. I have to admit I've been taken in by the line about him coming from another state. Technically true but misleading, and all too easy to fail to investigate if one doesn't maintain an objective journalistic mindset.

Not that it wasn't a problem before, but I think the bias we're seeing today really got a boost as a misguided remedy to Trump. Journalists were having to deal with a president who couldn't be shamed into being honest and was getting too much of an unfiltered assist in the regurgitation of his propaganda. In reality the problem was mostly due to headlines (normally controlled by the editors) repeating Trump's claims and leaving it to the article text to evaluate them. In a world with so much "news" that many people simply headline-skim this was a valid concern - one correctly counteracted, for example, by using terms like "falsely claims" instead of just "claims".

Unfortunately, this also gave an opening for woke journalists, ever frustrated with people's unwillingness to accept their expansive definitions of words like "racism" and "white supremacy" as definitive, to promote the idea of writing with "moral clarity" and to use controversial terms with objective certainty. This alarmed me from the start, and it set us up badly for the summer of 2020, when white guilt would have its way with the minds of many Americans - and not just progressives.